Allen Saakyan teaches practical productivity systems: a five-sentence email template and one-sentence pitch format, plus calendar blocking in 15-, 30-, or 60-minute slots with color-coding. He demonstrates Google Calendar's drag-and-drop rescheduling and emphasizes how structured note-taking, templates, and organized scheduling build lasting productivity habits.
Chapters
Will you start taking notes now? I'm using Word. Using what? Word. Oh, you're using Microsoft Word to take notes. OK. Again, I didn't list all the options. Actually, there should have been a 5th option, which was one of the other note-taking platforms, but I don't know what that is. So for ones that don't take notes, will we start taking notes now? Are we on speaking terms? Yes? Yes or no? OK. So for ones that said that they don't take notes, are you guys going to take notes, yes or no? Probably. Probably, yes. OK. All right, no. Some people say no. That's perfectly fine. You don't need to take notes. But hopefully you'll understand the importance of that, though. Hold on, I'm just going to tuck this cord in. All right. All right, so, all right, let's check this question. Any samples for the Evernote to take the notes by name, company, and passions? Oh, we just showed that, right? Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, okay. Was that— question's good? Okay. Whoever asked that, I'm gonna check it off now. Okay. All right, let's move on. So, got about, okay, 15 minutes left. All right. So, I'm gonna get through this stuff a little faster now. Come on, I gotta click off the screen. All right. All right, so— oh, this one ended— that was supposed to be larger. That's weird. It's okay. So tip number 5, templates. So to know your elevator pitch, to have creative, quirky, conversational, and concise templates for your first call meetings, 5-sentence emails, all this stuff's critical. Crucial. So let's take a quick minute for an activity. So actually, before we do that, let's hear your elevator pitch. Short, one sentence. What do you do? One sentence? Yeah. I'm changing the educational field. Okay, that's good, but we're missing something. Okay, we're missing something. How are you changing the educational field? What's your elevator pitch? One sentence. Remember to say how you're changing it too. Okay, I enable connections through the art of writing. Okay, good. Enabling connections through the art of writing. What is the medium that you're using to enable those connections. Okay? So this is gonna be really important. You guys know what— why is it called an elevator pitch? 'Cause— yes? You just have a minute to explain your idea and convince them that it's worth the time. Because you're in the elevator with them. That's the idea. You're riding from the 1st floor to the 12th floor, from the 8th floor to the 3rd floor. You have 15 seconds to explain to them in a short and relatable way what you're passionate about and why they might be interested in it. So it's gonna be really important for us to remember it. Here, let me give you guys a quick example. This is a structure that I use, this whole 5-sentence email structure is what I use. This we need to use for storytelling. Right? So all of your elevator pitches need to be story-told in fun and conversational and concise ways. This— okay, this email, let's— let me just read you off what I wrote. This is a make-believe company called Kite, okay? Hi Rachel, I'm Alan from Kite. We make beautiful, affordable, and the highest flying kites you've ever seen. Check out our video here. Your retail store would be a great fit. Please let us know if you're interested or not. Thanks for your time, Rachel. Best, Alan. 5 sentences. 5 sentences. Got the point across, what I'm doing. I'm taking these beautiful and affordable kites into retail stores. Here's a video. Okay? And thank you for your time. Moving on. Okay? Do you guys think that you can structure pitches that way? Yeah? Structure cold emails, warm emails that way? Okay. Can I get a yes? Yes. 1, 2, 3. Yes! 1, 2, 3. Yes! 1, 2, 3. Yes! All right. Good energy, good energy. So, over time the business will become your DNA. I'm gonna ask another quick poll. All right. What calendar service do you use? Classic paper calendar, Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, one of the other 1,000+ calendar services, or no calendar. All right. I'm interested to see the results of that one. All right, 4 people use Google Calendar, 1 uses a different calendar, and 1 uses no calendar. So let me try and get through the importance of it quick. So this is really important. When you schedule things into a calendar, you stay organized. Whether it's a paper calendar or an electronic calendar, we're going to stay organized this way. Scheduling into 15, 30, 60-minute slots, whether it's a meeting, a phone call, whatever you need to do, and you can color coordinate it based on level of importance. Things that are really important, red color. Things that aren't as important, green color, that are more relaxational. When you have a call with somebody or a meeting with somebody, you send them a calendar invite. for it with you. You have their name and your name and then the objective that you're doing. Pretty simple, yeah? Yeah. Okay, good. I really hope that you guys take into account the benefits of staying organized with the calendar and what it'll do for your business. So I'm gonna show you another just quick video. All right, it's right here. Should have had them pulled up ahead of time, my bad. All right, so here's my Google Calendar. So let's take a look at this together, everyone. So for example, this is, I go swimming on Wednesday mornings. I had a friend that was staying with us at the apartment. Going to Crater Lake over the weekend, sending people invites for that. So here's a bunch of other stuff in the calendar, right? Here's a phone call that I had. I was star talking World's Fair. Another objective that I had to do was call somebody at California Academy of Sciences. All right, now check this out. I'm organizing stuff by importance. I missed something. I missed something on Sunday, right? I was on Tuesday. Because I missed that objective, I'm simply clicking and dragging it over to the next day. It's as simple as that, to just move a task over that you missed, okay? That's one of my favorite uses of the service, is that I can just easily just move over tasks that I missed, and then get things done that way. All right. So— oops, one more over. There we go. Hi. All right.
